Failed Recordings - What Is Going On?

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Have had recent regular failed recordings all on ITV or ITV HD, on 3 different T2100s in both North Wales and Worcester. This is evidently global or at least limited to T2100s or similar. Very unreliable at the moment....! Switching on the box mid recording period always seems to make it start up the recording.

Most (but not all) of our recordings failed whilst away for a week. Using a YouView T2110 (but not a BT customer).

The successful recordings all seemed to be those that had been booked in as a "record episode" (rather than as a "record series").

The failed recordings all seemed to be those that had been booked in as a "record series" but had been working fine prior to our departure.

Seeing this on our return, the first thing done was to reboot the box. Following this, it was observed that "record episode" bookings still worked, but "record series" bookings were still failing. So the second thing done was to scrub all the "record series" bookings and then create them afresh. This seems to have sorted things out. Did not do any resetting or retuning. No idea why this all started happening. YouView's explanation of what has caused the issue seems to have been mostly silence, from what I can see on here.

Your consistently negative utterances on here are not helpful. And they make me wonder why you still bother with a YouView box.

I also note the use of the word ‘supporters’, to describe those who have not entirely given up on YouView, in a somewhat pejorative fashion.

The paradox is that these ‘supporters’ are quite as free with cogent criticism of YouView, where merited, and this is probably more effective than constant negativity, which just gets tuned out.

But here, as with the ‘3 second recordings’ issue we had way back, we supporters know that we have said all we can say at the moment, having helped to qualify the problem where we could, and not knowing of any workarounds to suggest.

And unlike you, are secure in the knowledge that YouView are continuing to work hard on this problem as a top priority, and we must wait for the outcome of their investigations.

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley

I've had one clear failure of this type, i.e. series recording set but box does not wake up 15 minutes early via the basic timer and only then starts recording when I happen to wake the box myself during the recording period (to watch something else or chase play the expected recording). This one failure happened after the retune date for the area I am in. The failed wake, and hence partial recording, was the Giro highlights at 7pm on Quest on Friday (the one where Froome unexpectedly left everyone trailing in his wake and took the overall lead).

All my scheduled recordings (14 at the moment) are series recordings and all pre-date the retune day for the area I am in.

I would speculate there is some issue with the basic wake timer related to recordings set prior to a change that affects the associated channel, such as the recent retune. Presumably that retune only affects a (small?) subset of channels and in practice this issue only appears to affect recordings when the box is in standby and needs to use the basic timer to wake itself up (which it is supposed to do about 15 minutes before the scheduled time so it can listen for any last minute data changes and the now/next accurate record signal to know when to 'exactly' start the recording).

Our boxes is generally on in the evenings which also mostly corresponds to when the series recordings we have are set which combined with the above theory then leads to almost no failures for us.

As per the comments by @speedyrite, I would expect newly set recordings not to be affected. If that is the case this issue will appear to die away naturally in the absence of any confirmation and adjustment from YouView. If nothing is done though then perhaps this issue will appear again when the next retune wave comes along.

And if your thinking about @speedyrite’s observations are accurate, the workaround for anyone affected by this issue is to cancel any ongoing Series schedules they have, and immediately reinstate them.

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley

Look at that! (And the one on the right is 22nd May, after which the Series stops altogether.)

And all the YouView box can do to excuse itself is to point out that it was pulled off the mains on 14th May, to facilitate our hanging the TV on the wall and getting a new unit for it and the other boxes, and not wired back up until the 26th May, 4 days after its lookahead from 14th May expired.

Tut....

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley

And all the YouView box can do to excuse itself is to point out that it was pulled off the mains on 14th May, ~ and not wired back up until the 26th May, 4 days after its lookahead from 14th May expired.

Good evening @Roy. Welcome to the YouView Community Forum. Sorry to hear about the issue that you are experiencing with your box.

There have been several reports of YouView boxes missing recordings recently, but you are the first person to report an occurrence of the problem when the box is not connected to the mains.

Try plugging your box into the mains and then turning the clock back to 14th May.

@scott@Steve Oliver@speedyriteCan you please drop me a PM with your postcode in and also confirm your YV box model so I can forward the details to our team who are investigating?

As mentioned in my last post, if you use the app to book the recordings please let us know the requested information:If anyone is using the Android app to book recordings (booked through the app rather than the box) and are receiving failed recordings, please let us know:

What Android device you are using

What Android update your phone currently has

When you started getting failed recordings

If you are using the iOS app to book recordings and these have been failing as well, it'd be helpful to know the equivalent details as above as well.

Just to add to the reported occurrences of the Failed Recording issue: I’m in the NW (Winter Hill), have an extremely fast & reliable fibre connection (BT) & have not previously had any problems with YouView. I was away on holiday between 21st & 30th May & when I returned yesterday I found that the majority (not all) of my recordings during the period I was away had failed. This involved both series and single episode recordings which were predominantly though not wholly set to record via the box rather than via the app. I’ve read through all the comments here and the YouView support advice, have checked everything is as it should be & thought it worth adding my experience above to the incidences reported here. It feels as though there is an underlying error in the service that needs to be addressed rather than customers needing to adjust their individual setups. One other thing I’ve noticed upon returning which may be connected or may be a total red herring is in relation to catch-up via the various players (iPlayer etc): I’ve never had any problems previously with this but yesterday/today programmes I’ve tried to view this way are constantly breaking up/crashing. Frustrating given that I’m trying to catch up on programmes my box failed to record. Hope the problem(s) are resolved soon and that reporting the above helps identify what the issue(s) is/are.

If you return to your first posting and touch/click the little downward arrow top right on it, this will open up Edit, where you can make the posting say what it should have said, and Post it again, where it will replace what was there before.

Then if you likewise Edit your second posting down to a single full stop (you can’t make it blank, nor can you delete it entirely for yourself) our nice @Sarah will happen along and delete it for you.

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley

Please forgive me if this is a stupid question.Why has no one suggested changing the standby mode to Always Ready?

'Smart standby' should I think be equivalent to 'always ready' during the smart standby 'on' period (and equivalent to the energy saving mode otherwise). So in principle it should not be a major improvement unless perhaps in the case of if the failed recordings are occurring outside of the smart standby window. The one failed recording I have had that I mention above fell well within the smart standby 'on' period so if the box had been set to always on it seems doubtful it would have made any difference.

That said those that are getting many failed recordings may wish to try 'always ready' and see whether it helps. I would be more inclined though to try the suggestion of deleting series recordings from the schedule and re-adding them (which has worked for at least one person).

Please forgive me if this is a stupid question.Why has no one suggested changing the standby mode to Always Ready?

Not at all stupid, but why do you think that might help, when I would expect most of the affected boxes to be in Smart Standby, which is the same as Always Ready for most of the day?

And certainly mine was in that state for the three programmes that failed during Tuesday daytime for me - Homes Under The Hammer BBC HD 101 10:00, Doctors ditto 13:45: Countdown Ch4 HD 104 14:10; box had been left on BBC1 SD, in Smart Standby?

All 3 of which recorded OK on Wednesday and today Thursday, things having been left the same as on Tuesday, the box not rebooted, etc. etc.

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley

Thanks @Roy and @Keith. Maybe it was a stupid question.It would depend on what standby settings people are using. It's just that I've been reading reports of recordings starting when users have turned their boxes on, and reports of failures when users have been away from home.

Thanks @Roy and @Keith. Maybe it was a stupid question.It would depend on what standby settings people are using. It's just that I've been reading reports of recordings starting when users have turned their boxes on, and reports of failures when users have been away from home.

The only stupid question is the one you want to ask, but don’t.

But we might as well ask why not leave the box switched On - would this perhaps avoid the failed recordings? (The reasons why not are heat, energy consumption and that the damn thing will eventually switch itself anyway, but this is a consideration for YouView testing at least).

But what is the takeaway from the other observations? If there are failures when users are away from home, this would imply issues when the box hasn’t being switched on for a while. So you would expect the programmes soon after they had gone away from home to be OK, and later ones not.

Is this what is being seen? Or is it perhaps just that failures built up over a while away stand out more than ones handled day to day?

And then the programmes that miss their start time to start recording on Standby, but start when the box is switched On - what could the mechanism be?

The implication is that the box saw the Present/Following marker OK, but couldn’t start recording. Or more insidiously, thought it had started recording, but actually hadn’t.

A situation that gets revisited, and corrected, when the box is then turned On.

But how does this square with the reports of this being an issue with Series recordings set before the recent retunings, fixable by cancelling and resetting all the Series recordings, or setting individual recordings instead?

What could there be about the Series entries that would do that?

But I do think there is something in the theory that the box hasn’t quite dealt with the the retune, somehow. Which might have ‘orphaned’ some aspects of Series recordings made when the tunings were different? It depends on what data is held in a Series schedule entry, and how, which only YouView will know.

So a clean-up; retune with no aerial in to clear this right down, retune again now with the aerial to refresh this. Delete every Series recording schedule entry and reinput it.

See if that solves it or not.

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley

Just to let you all know that we are still working on this issue to try and get it resolved asap as we understand that it's frustrating for anyone expecting to come home to watch something you've recorded and for it to not be working.

Any information you can provide (if not done so already) about the following would be very helpful for the investigation:

· If you have retuned recently, if so, roughly when

· Postcode (please do not post this publicly, please send it to me as a private message)

· Standby settings

· How the recording was set (through app – iOS or Android or
setting directly on the box)

Given the above, what could have changed, after a certain date/time, to start this issue on many different boxes on many different releases?

I thought it might be retune related, but you think not. And we presume the Present/Following mechanism itself can’t have been changed by DigitalUK?

So what are we left with? A date trigger?

So I wonder if a number has got too big? Some catenation of time and date representation after 25/04/2018 (or whenever the issue was first observed) has wrapped over the top of a binary number somewhere, sometimes, causing the schedule for some programmes to be completely misread, and no alert ready for the start to be generated, though other processes handling the number (What’s on now? Did I miss a recording?) handle it correctly.

Much like the way that using only a 32-bit integer will bring an end to Unix in early 2038, unless something is done...

‘Does television exist for us to watch, or do we exist to watch television?’ - Noah Hawley